Assessing the validity of Hainan’s 400- year gazetteer record for establishing historical baselines Connor Walsh August 2016 A thesis submitted for the partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at Imperial College London Submitted for the MSc in Conservation Science 2 Declaration of Own Work I declare that this thesis: Assessing the validity of Hainan’s 400-year gazetteer record for establishing historical baselines is entirely my own work, and that where material could be construed as the work of others, it is fully cited and referenced, and/or with appropriate acknowledgement given. Signed. Name of student: Connor Walsh Name of Supervisors: Dr Samuel Turvey; Clare Duncan 3 Table of Contents Declaration of Own Work ..................................................................................................... 2 List of acronyms .................................................................................................................... 4 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 6 Methods ................................................................................................................................. 8 Results ................................................................................................................................. 12 Discussion ........................................................................................................................... 16 Supporting Information description ..................................................................................... 20 Literature cited .................................................................................................................... 21 Appendix S1. Chinese characters and transliteration .......................................................... 24 Appendix S2. Digitization workflow ................................................................................... 26 Appendix S3. Raw data: gibbons ........................................................................................ 27 Appendix S4. Raw data: other species ................................................................................ 85 4 List of acronyms CE: Current Era OLE : Optimal linear estimation Assessing the validity of Hainan’s 400-year gazetteer record for establishing historical baselines Abstract Conservationists have sampled the enormous collection of local gazetteers in China to find species information dating from as much as 1,500 years ago until the 20th century. However, the inherent statistical completeness and biases of the gazetteers, and their ability to provide a robust historical baseline of past biological conditions and faunal changes has yet to be tested. This paper collates gazetteer references to the world’s rarest ape, the Hainan gibbon, and other mammal species on Hainan island, China’s southernmost province. The records cover 1521—1935, with 114 gibbon records. The density of records increases through time towards the present. After qualitatively scoring these records they were analyzed with optimal linear estimation (OLE), a technique to estimate extinction date based on limited historical sightings. The findings show the gazetteer record is robust because it predicts survival for species that are still extant today, past the end of the gazetteer record. This suggests gazetteers may provide useful information on past environmental conditions and change. The gazetteers also record wolf and dhole, species that are not otherwise confirmed to have occurred on the island. Further OLE on those 2 species suggests they may have been present on Hainan well into the 20th century. Keywords: Dhole, Hainan gibbon, optimal linear estimation, taxonomic boundaries Word count: 5967 5 Acknowledgements The initial concept for this study, and much of the context and hope for a practical impact, comes from S. Turvey of the Institute of Zoology (IoZ). C. Duncan also of IoZ guided statistics. B. Fuehrer of SOAS, University of London, provided sinological and translation guidance. C. Searle of Renmin University of China helped source Chinese documents not available in Europe, including the base text. Introduction environmental destruction in the 20th and 21st centuries. In the modern era China has Historical baselines are used in seen repeated waves of environmental conservation to help make sense of current damage: since the founding of the People’s environmental patterns and processes, inform Republic of China in 1949 the human management decisions, and place population has doubled, post-war economic conservation into wider cultural and prioritization led to land conversion, which intellectual contexts (Szabó 2010; Rick & was followed by the Great Leap Forward Lockwood 2013; Davies 2014). Shifting from 1958 to 1961, another period of major baseline syndrome, where the perspective of environmental damage (Edmonds 1999); and what is ‘normal’ is degraded over time, can subsequent economic growth spurts in the mislead not just on population size (Pauly 1980s, 1990s, and 21st century were not 1995) but even the possible former regional matched by conservation action (Liu & existence of large mammal species. Diamond 2005). The Environmental However, historical sources seldom match Protection Law came into effect only in the requirements of a contemporary 1989. With the likely loss of the Yangtze biodiversity survey (Rick & Lockwood river dolphin or baiji (Lipotes vexillifer), 2013): records may be incomplete, organisms China is the scene of one of only 2 may be described according to folk extinctions of an entire mammal family in classifications which ignore or pre-date the past 2 centuries (Turvey 2009). In this standard scientific nomenclature (Fleck et al context native biodiversity baselines are 1999); and over centuries the individual urgently needed. observer will change many times. Therefore while historical baselines are valuable, the Previous investigations into the past sources must be critically evaluated before status of Chinese biodiversity using historical they can confidently be applied to inform sources have been conducted by Wen (2009, conservation science and management. 2013), Chatterjee et al (2012), and Turvey et al (2015b). Their approaches began in the With its ancient written record scholarly tradition of sinology (the study of (Wilkinson 2015), China appears to hold pre-modern China) and advanced to strong potential as a place to identify conservation biology with GIS and statistics, historical baselines. The need is urgent: potentially identifying the most appropriate anthropogenic pressures have led to extreme habitat types to restore, and predicting 7 responses to climate change (Chatterjee et al In this study the biases and errors to 2012; Turvey et al 2015b). However before contend with include inexpert observations; historical baselines can be constructed using editorial characteristics of the gazetteer style; historical texts, the original records still need irregular publication dates; and different to be critically examined to see just how ideas of what constitutes a species. A robust a source they are. qualitative process involving historical, linguistic, statistical and taxonomic steps can Of all the biodiversity challenges in aspire to see past these biases. China, arguably the most urgent is that of the Hainan gibbon (Nomascus hainanus), the Identifying species in these historical rarest ape on Earth, with fewer than 30 sources is resource-intensive. While the individuals living, limited to just one nature gazetteers list a range of fauna and flora, I reserve, on the island of Hainan (Turvey et al have restricted this study to mammals. The 2015a). In this situation any new information various authors’ understandings of plants and on the species’ ecology, distribution, and animals will differ greatly, both between dynamics are valuable. In this paper I kingdoms and temporally, therefore analyze historical gazetteer records from comparing records from different taxa over Hainan Province dating from 1521 to 1935 to time may introduce additional biases. Only assess mentions of Hainan gibbons and other comparing mammals aims to limit this. mammals over time, with the broader goal of examining the validity of the sources that The spatial focus of this study, previous studies have taken when using Hainan, is a tropical island province of about gazetteers to inform Hainan gibbon 34,000 km2. It lies south of the Chinese conservation (Chatterjee et al 2012; Turvey mainland at about 20º north and as close as et al 2015b). There are no known Hainan 240 km from Vietnam. The region it sits in, gibbon population estimates to compare with Southeast Asia, has (along with South Asia) before the late 20th century (Turvey et al the highest density of threatened land 2015a), so the analysis is based on whether mammals (Schipper et al 2008). In the 20th the animals were likely extant in 1935 (by century Hainan faced huge environmental virtue of being extant today). This can simply pressures, with 35% of potential gibbon indicate whether the gazetteer record is habitat lost between 1991 and 2008 (Zhang robust. et al 2010). Potentially confirming the gazetteers as a valid tool for researching 8 local historical baselines may open up to the taxable capacity